based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more …
1776 – Happy Birthday, American allies? (France largely contributed to the creation of your nation), but please keep your politics at home!
1826 – Stephen Foster, American composer, born (d.1864); Like Yankee Doodle, the composer Stephen Foster was born on the Fourth of July. His list of sentimental down-home hits—"Oh Susanna," "Old Folks At Home," "Beautiful Dreamer"," Jeannie with The Light Brown Hair," and "Old Black Joe"—make the jingoistic George M. Cohan appear strident and un-American by comparison.
Flag-waving or no, what made fireworks go off for this star-spangled tunesmith was another composer - George Cooper, a handsome young man who is best known today for his "Sweet Genevieve," a song perhaps best sung as a barbershop quartet, when drunk. So taken was Foster with sweet George Cooper that he abandoned his wife and family to run away with him. The two lived and worked together in the last 12 months of Foster's life. Living in a cheap rooming house in the Bowery, Foster, already in weak condition from a bad cold, died a few days after a gash, incurred in a fall, became infected.
Cooper describes finding Foster after the fall:
Steve never wore any night clothes and he lay there on the floor naked and suffering horribly. He had wonderful big brown eyes and they looked up at me with an appeal I can never forget. He whispered, 'I'm done for', and begged for a drink...We put his clothes on him and took him to the hospital. In addition to the cut on his throat and bruise on his head, he was suffering from a bad burn on his thigh, caused by the overturning of a spirit lamp used to boil water. This had happened several days before and he had said nothing about it. All the time we were caring for him, he seemed terribly weak and his eyelids kept fluttering."
1855 – On this day in 1855, Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The first edition consisted of 12 poems, and was published anonymously; Whitman set much of the type himself, and paid for its printing. Over his lifetime, he published eight more editions, adding poems each time; there were 122 new poems in the third edition alone (1860-61), and the final "death-bed edition," published in 1891, contained almost 400.
The first edition received several glowing — and anonymous — reviews in New York newspapers. Most of them were written by Whitman himself. The praise was unstinting: "An American bard at last!" One legitimate mention by popular columnist Fanny Fern called the collection daring and fresh. Emerson felt it was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." This wasn't a universal opinion, however; many called it filth, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier threw his copy into the fire.
Winston Johnson with Leon Allen
1941 – Winston Johnson (d.2021) was an Atlanta LGBTQ activist who helped build a vital alliance between the LGBTQ and civil rights movements through his friendship with Coretta Scott King.
Winston Johnson was born in Valdosta, Ga. He grew up in Greenville, Fla., and later dropped out of the University of Florida after fighting depression and fearing the Johns Committee, which persecuted gay people across the state in the 1950s.
Johnson joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1963 and met his longtime partner Leon Allen the following year in Jacksonville, Fla. The couple moved to Atlanta in 1967 in the hopes of finding a more gay-friendly place to live. They spent the next 46 years together until Allen’s death. "The most important role in my life," Johnson wrote recently, "was caring for Leon the last 10 years of his life. I felt more alive at that time because I knew how important my efforts were for him. He died in 2006 and marriage equality came to Georgia in 2015." Johnson’s relationship formed the foundation of his activism.
In Atlanta, Johnson landed a customer service job with Eastern Airlines. It’s in this work, and later with Carey Limousines, that Johnson made connections with prominent business leaders, politicians and celebrities.
In the 1970s, it was a time of widespread homophobia in the country and especially in the South. Allen and Johnson remained in the closet because LGBTQ+ folks could lose their jobs, housing, and insurance for being out.
He met Coretta Scott King in April 1968 on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. They became fast friends, but Johnson didn’t tell her about his relationship with Allen until 1986 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s anti-sodomy law.
Johnson later asked King to speak at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in New York City. She quickly agreed and it was King’s first public support of LGBTQ rights.
Inspired by their experiences in New York City, Johnson and Allen joined twelve other local activists to create a steering committee to organize an HRC Fund event in Atlanta. On May 21, 1988, the first Human Rights Campaign Fund Southeastern Gala occurred downtown at the Marriott Marquis. The committee hoped to attract 200 attendees but that night 660 folks showed up.
Johnson became more open about his sexual orientation in talks with other civil rights leaders over the years, including the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis, Julian Bond and Xernona Clayton.
Johnson also befriended then-President Jimmy Carter through his work at Eastern. Carter invited Johnson to a 1978 White House State Dinner, which he attended alone out of fear of exposing his relationship with Allen.
Johnson had a number of conversations with Carter about life as a gay man after he left office. Carter spoke out in favor of gay marriage in 2012.
Johnson was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 and then bladder cancer in 2019. He took on a new form of activism in his later years – decrying that Georgia has no "right to die" laws. Johnson died on May 11, 2021.
1947 – Jacques Morali aka Don Prince, (d.1991) singer, composer, songwriter, arranger, and producer of Pop and Soundtracks, is born in Casablanca, Morocco.
Formerly a salesman at record shop in Orly Airport, he started out in the music industry as a composer for the Parisian variety/burlesque club Crazy Horse, and also as a solo act. He was then hired at age 24 as an A&R for Polydor.
In 1975, he met future business partner Henri Belolo (then an independent label owner and music publisher) whilst searching for a song to produce.
It was on the East Coast of the United States (after Morali pitched the idea of releasing "Brazil" as a disco record) that Belolo agreed to sponsor a long-lasting residency for Morali at Sigma Sound Studios.
Working together and with American lyricists & conductors Horace Ott, Phil Hurtt, and Beauris Whitehead (and later Producer/Arranger Fred Zarr & Lyricist Bruce Vilanch), they left an indelible mark on American & worldwide culture with their work creating & producing acts such as the Village People, The Ritchie Family, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Juvet, Cher, Diva, Dennis Parker (whom Morali dated), and Pia Zadora.
Jacques was one half of Can't Stop Productions, Inc., alongside Belolo, and at some point claimed to have made US$8,000,000 a year in the 70s.
Between 1974 and 1982, he recorded at least 65 releases, and currently possesses around 400 credits with ASCAP, BMI, and SACEM. Nonetheless, following the "disco backlash" of the early-80s, he would eventually find success elusive.
A Homosexual, he was diagnosed with HIV in the mid-80s and died of AIDS in Paris on November 15, 1991. He is the brother of Serge Morali, who has managed his copyrights since 1991.
1953 – Charlie Murphy (d.2016) was an American singer-songwriter. Growing up during the civil rights and anti-war movements, Charlie devoted his life to social change.
After college, Charlie chose to work with youth through the Roanoke Virginia mental health services. Charlie soon discovered that he needed to empower them to take an active role in making things better. So, he left the world of mental health and chose to express his passion for social change through music. He began writing and composing songs.
In the mid seventies, Charlie toured the country as a folk singer, inspiring audiences with a passion for social change. He was a pioneer of the men’s movement and sang openly about Gay rights, making him one of the few out and proud Gay singer/songwriters of his day.
Murphy's album Catch the Fire (1981), released on the Good Fairy Productions label, contained the original version of 'Burning Times', later covered by Christy Moore and Roy Bailey. The album also contained the LGBT rights anthem 'Gay Spirit'. The album is notable for addressing LGBT issues and pagan spirituality within its lyrics. The song "Burning Times" concerns the persecution of women accused of witchcraft in the Middle Ages and early modern periods. Its chorus mentions several pagan female deities: Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali... Inanna. It also mentions that nine million women died, ...in this holocaust against the nature people.
The other key song, "Gay Spirit", expresses the frustration of growing up gay within a prejudiced society:
When we were born they tried to put us in a cage,
and tell our bodies what to feel,
we have chosen to feel all the truth,
that our bodies do reveal....
The chorus is a rousing burst of optimism:
There's a gay spirit singing in our hearts,
leading us through these troubled times,
There's a gay spirit moving 'round this land,
calling us to a time of open love.
In 1996, Charlie and Langley resident, Peggy Taylor, a journalist and creative development specialist, founded a creativity-based youth development organization called the Power of Hope: Youth Empowerment Through the Arts. Their Creative Community Model for integrating the arts into youth development, quickly caught fire and began to spark a transformation in youth work.
In 2006, Charlie and his husband, theater-artist Eric Mulholland, began traveling internationally, leading Creative Community-based youth programs and trainings in Uganda, South Africa, Italy, and the UK. Three years later, with Peggy Taylor and UK-based entrepreneur Ian Watson, Charlie formed PYE Global: Partners for Youth Empowerment to further spread the international work. Charlie and Eric spent several years developing an international network of PYE partners and facilitators dedicated to bringing creativity and hope into the lives of young people. With over one million youth impacted to date and thirty partners in fifteen countries, Charlie’s influence continues to grow long after his death in 2016.
1975 – Mathieu Chantelois, born in Montreal, is a Canadian television personality and magazine editor.
He is a graduate of Carleton University's journalism program, and working on his PhD, probing the roots of circuit parties and tackling the evolution of gay body culture. Chantelois became famous as one of the original housemates on the Canadian reality television series U8TV: The Lofters. The first season's only openly gay resident, Chantelois created the series So Gay TV for PrideVision. SoGay TV was nominated for a Gemini Award for it's engaging Coming Out episode, hosted by Mathieu.
Following the end of his term on The Lofters, Chantelois continued hosting programming for PrideVision and its successor channel OUTtv, including Read Out!, featuring authors from the LGBT community, and the reality series COVERguy. Chantelois has also worked as a cultural reporter for TFO's Panorama. He is also an editor of the movie magazine Famous Quebec.
2003, Mathieu Chantelois and his partner, Marcelo Gomez, were among the first same-sex couples to get married in Ontario after the court ruling allowing same-sex marriage.
"I was quite against marriage before it became legal," Chantelois says.
He had always seen marriage as old-fashioned and broken and thought the gay community should be fighting for a new kind of union rather than something that didn't work anymore. But, afraid the law could be reversed, Chantelois and his partner rushed to the altar. He recalls the day as surreal, describing the protesters at the door: holding Bibles and screaming as he and Gomez went inside to get married.
"I was doing this as an activist more than anything else, and when I got inside and when the ceremony started, I realized that the action that I was taking was nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with gay rights," he says.
"It became very emotional, and I realized that I was believing more than I thought I would in the institution of marriage. It's really the day I got married that I realized that the symbolism of marriage was something important and very serious."
On February 14, 2005, he was a keynote speaker at the grand opening celebration for the Pride Library at the University of Western Ontario.
In 2006, Chantelois was named chair of the board at The 519 Church St. Community Centre in Toronto. Mathieu now lives in Toronto with his husband, Marcelo.
In 2015, he was named the new executive director of Toronto Pride.
1982 – Died: Terry Higgins (b.1945) was among the first people known to die of an AIDS-related illness in England, on July 4, 1982. He worked as a Hansard reporter in the House of Commons and as a barman in the nightclub Heaven. He collapsed while working at Heaven and was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital, London where he died of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and primary multifocal leukoencephalopathy some weeks later.
Martyn Butler and Terrence Higgins' partner Rupert Whitaker and friends set up The Terry Higgins Trust, later renamed the Terrence Higgins Trust in his memory, dedicated to preventing the spread and promoting awareness of the disease. Whitaker went on to study medicine and became a medical scientist working on HIV and AIDS related illness.
The Terrence Higgins Trust was the first charity in the UK to be set up in response to the HIV epidemic and has been at the forefront of the fight against HIV and AIDS ever since.
2007 marked the 25th anniversary of Terry Higgins' death and was a quiet but significant milestone, among many milestones, marking now over a quarter of a century of HIV/AIDS.
The 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass contained a preface, which was left out of subsequent editions, and in it Whitman wrote:
"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
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